In case you were wondering,
the quartet’s fuller name is the Mathilda
Nostitz. It was named after a distinguished
member of a famous family whose patronage
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
was generous and wide-ranging. It seems
to survive on the first initial in its
documentation.

Naturally Czech and
Slovak music fans will look to the Ravel
and make disappointed noises about the
missing native quartet – there is no
shortage – but others
may well reflect on the parallels, implied
because the booklet never spells them
out, between the Ravel and the Janáček.
It actually makes for a programme of
stylistic and actual historical lineage,
Haas famously having studied under Janáček
in Brno.

The Moravian master’s
First Quartet is youthfully projected,
more so than by those old masters the
Smetana in either their 1965 stereo
recording (now on Testament) or their
1976 Supraphon disc. Incidentally we
should be wary here of absolutes; whilst
the nature of their interpretation,
its colouristic and expressive slant,
didn’t much change there were subtle,
though slight, differences in tempo.
They tightened up over that decade and
there is a very slight increase in tension
in these two recordings. The M Nostitz
are less the personalised tonalists
naturally – there are very few Jíři
Nováks or Milan Škampas around these
days – but they play with flair and
commitment. This can occasionally lead
them astray, and I felt in the second
movement they were trying to project
too much, the rhythms sounding over–processed
and not quite natural.
Others may well disagree but those unison
passages are slightly too hard. As for
the finale, well, the M Nostitz have
a point of view and I respect it. This
is avuncular and extrovert playing but
I do miss the noble pain in Jíři
Novák’s tone and Škampa’s unrivalled
genius in the viola part, that internal,
troubled spirit that in the newcomer’s
hands is rather public.

Haas’s
Third Quartet was completed in 1938.
There are certainly more than a few
stylistic reminiscences of Janáček
in the scurrying figures, those
abrupt conjunctions, the yearning cello
line, the rapid cut and expressive thrust.
But, true to its time, the rhythm is
motoric. The Wenceslas Chorale runs
throughout the central movement, fluid,
nobly defiant, with a stoic resistance
all the more affecting for its understatement
– the restatement of the theme is especially
touching. The finale is fast-slow, with
Jewish melodies emerging quite explicitly
along with the variations that make
up the movement. It ends in confident
affirmation. It’s a fine work that should
be performed far more often.

The
Ravel is brightly and sweetly lit in
this performance, the M Nostitz making
the most of those abrupt conjunctions,
the eruptive element that Janáček
must have absorbed. The pizzicati in
the second movement could perhaps
be shaped and phrased a little more
convincingly and later on rhythms are
just a touch flaccid – but hereabouts
they do remind me of that old Galimir
recording for Vanguard, certainly more
than they remind me of inheritors of
the flame such as the Calvet. The Czechs
feel the slow movement faster than many
of their rivals and it emerges as less
inward and introspective as a result
whereas they cultivate a quasi-orchestra
unison sonority at the start of the
finale – rather as the Calvet did in
the 1930s, but unlike the Galimir who
take care to clarify the individual
lines.

Very properly this
group has its own ideas as to repertoire
and programming. The recorded sound
is particularly good and the notes are
free of fancy verbiage. In the end it’s
actually rather clever programming and
it gave me some pause for thought to
consider the interconnections between
the Ravel and subsequent Czech quartets
– certainly not confined to Janáček.

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